Man Killed in Rare Midtown Shooting

By

Sean Gardiner and

Danny Gold

Updated Dec. 10, 2012 5:10 p.m. ET

A gunman armed with an automatic pistol crept up behind a Los Angeles man walking in Midtown Manhattan on Monday afternoon and shot him fatally in the head before escaping in a waiting car, police said.

The area just south of Central Park and not far from Columbus Circle usually teems with tourists and shoppers in the weeks before Christmas. But it was unusually quiet about 2 p.m. as the victim, identified by police as Brandon Woodard, 31 years old, of Los Angeles, strolled on West 58th Street, away from Seventh Avenue.

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NYPD Crime Scene Unit and detectives at the scene of the shooting.
Anthony DelMundo for The Wall Street Journal

The killing marked the fourth homicide this year in an area not usually touched by murder—the Midtown North Precinct, which runs from 59th Street south to approximately 42nd Street and stretches from the Hudson River to Lexington Avenue.

Mr. Woodard was passing under the American flag hanging near the entrance to the St. Thomas Choir School when he was shot once in the back of the head at close range.

"The shooter then turned, walked a few steps eastbound and got into a parked, waiting gray or silver MKZ Lincoln sedan," said Paul Browne, the spokesman from the New York Police Department.

The car traveled east on West 58th, then turned south onto Seventh Avenue toward Times Square. Police on Monday night they were still searching for the killer and his getaway driver.

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In this still from surveillance footage released by the NYPD, the gunman is seen behind Brandon Lincoln Woodard a moment before the shooting.
NYPD

A law-enforcement official with knowledge of the case said, "It definitely looks like a hit."

Mr. Woodard was taken to St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, where he was pronounced dead. He had been staying at the Hudson Hotel on West 58th Street, about a block from the scene of the shooting, and had checked out Monday afternoon, a person familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Woodard, who was from the Playa Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, graduated in 2003 with a bachelor's degree in business degree from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Seabicio Rodregues, a 53-year-old doorman, was inside a nearby building on West 58th when he said he heard a gunshot, though he didn't realize what it was at the time. "I heard a 'tuk,' that's it," he said. "I didn't give it a lot of attention."

Later, Mr. Rodregues said he saw the victim lying on the ground, face up.

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Brandon Woodard
Hermosa Beach Police

David Mirambeau,
29, was making a delivery for United Parcel Service Inc. when he mistook the gunshot for a blown tire. "Next thing I knew, I saw [the victim] on the floor," he said. "He was gasping for air, he was still alive."

He said two cellphones were on the ground next to Mr. Woodward, who he said was wearing a black rain coat, black jeans and purple Nike sneakers.

According to a published report, Mr. Woodard was involved in an altercation in 2004 with a security guard for the singer Usher backstage at a concert at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas. Mr. Woodard was the only person arrested by police and was charged with misdemeanor battery. He had accused the guard of injuring him in what he said was an unprovoked attack. A spokeswoman for the Clark County District Attorney's Office in Las Vegas said Mr. Woodard failed to appear in court in October 2004 and a warrant was issued for his arrest. In April 2008, Mr. Woodard was arrested in Las Vegas on the warrant. In May 2008, he pleaded guilty and a judge released him without imposing a jail term, the spokeswoman said.

Representatives of Usher couldn't immediately be reached for comment Monday.

Last week, also in the Midtown North precinct,
Ki-Suk Han,
58, was pushed to his death on the subway tracks inside the 49th Street station after getting into an argument with 30-year-old Naeem Davis, who has been charged with murder in the case.

Theodore Beckles, a 19-year-old student at Independence High School, was fatally stabbed in September in a fight with a student from the High School for Environmental Studies, which shares the same building as Mr. Beckles's school on West 56th Street. In April, 19-year-old
Henry Wachtel
allegedly beat his 63-year-old mother to death in what his attorney described as an epileptic seizure. The mother,
Karyn Kay,
had been an English teacher at LaGuardia High School.

All of those cases remain pending.

—Will James contributed to this article

Corrections & Amplifications There have been four homicides this year in the New York Police Department's Midtown North Precinct. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said there had been three homicides in the precinct so far in 2012.

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